Ghost Story
by Vanessa S. Quest
Summary: Inside a Mental Asylum lingers the ghosts of many broken minds... can Reid put together the pieces of the puzzle and solve a ghastly triple homicide? -Or did a ghost really do it?


No morning that starts at 6AM to the sounds of, "Wheels up in twenty," is a good morning.

Reid thinks this as he is spirited away, far too quickly, from coffee by his lover making other calls and bullying him out of the kitchen and toward the bathroom to get dressed.

It isn't until they're all on the plane, sans Garcia, that he's even looking over his very scant paper file and wondering if he was left out thanks to the electronic craze. He glances over Morgan's shoulder. No, apparently not. Apparently, they really just had that little to go on.

From what they did have, the local LEOs in Hyde Park, New York couldn't make heads or tails of a triple homicide. A triple homicide that had one person of interest and one material witness, which sounds like a slam dunk even without forensics, until- that is- one considers that the prime suspect _is_ the witness, and that the witness was locked inside a room when he was found days later massively dehydrated and without a scrap of physical evidence linking him to the crime.

It was a trick Houdini would be proud of. Four teenagers went into a condemned, closed Sanitarium, three came out in body bags, the other was sprouting that a ghost did it. Because of the complete lack of forensic evidence, all the cops had to go on was the boy's claims, oh that's right- he was a minor. Reid shook his head, this case was stacking up to work against them.

Tox screens stated that two of the victims had absinth and alcohol in their systems, the other deceased only had good-old-fashioned booze. The survivor? Anything he did take had metabolized out before he was found anyways.

"Alright, I know we don't have much to work on, but we've been given less before." Hotch stated, after finishing his own brief glance-over. "Rossi, I want you to go to Sam Wilson's house, see what you can learn from him. Morgan, go to the crime scene and see if you can find anything of use. Prentiss, Reid, I want you to interview with Sam, Prentiss- approach him as a suspect, Reid- approach him as a witness. Seaver, I want you to watch, see if you can pick up on his body language or any cues. I'll work victimology and see what sort of subject we might be looking for. The cops have had this kid in their custody since he got out of the hospital two nights ago. They don't have much more time to keep him there without lawyers going for blood, so we have to work quickly."

"Um, sir, why am I only observing? Isn't there anything more that I could be doing?" Seaver braved. Hotch shook his head.

"No, Prentiss and Reid will be busy keeping him talking, they won't have the luxury of seeing the minute details objectively. That, and you can learn some techniques for when you perform your own interrogation someday."

"Right, thank you sir." Seaver said, not quite believing it but knowing it was pointless to push more.

The flight took three hours, and the drive between the regional airport added another 35 minutes before they finally reached the police department.

Each had quickly gone to taking over their assigned tasks. Morgan investigated the closed Sanitarium, discussing with the head of police about what normally happened here.

"This place was thriving in the 60's, but then New York budget cuts closed this place down. They don't tear things down here, they just anticipate when it'll be needed again and renovated." The man rolled his eyes, "This place has been my own personal pain in the ass since I inherited this position 10 years ago. You can't _keep_ the teenagers out. You can't mark all the exits, because we only have so many cars we can't leave four for a single building. That, and they only just mostly do drugs up here or vandalize the property with spray paint. As long as they keep away from the little church further up the road, no one cares, and we get enough big crime bleeding over from the city bordering us to keep us plenty busy."

"Right… so drug sales are the main problems your town has?"

"That, and theft, petty larceny, and street racing; luckily for us, most of the local murders happen in the city's limits, not ours." He shrugged to emphasize, "_Most_."

"How did the victims die? In what order?" Morgan asked, looking at the first blood stain, it was large and ominous, but not a fatal amount of blood-loss for the size of the teenagers they were talking about.

"When they first entered, they came in through the first floor window that faces the woods and not the road. They were dropped off or they walked, but we have no way to corroborate the claim. Looks like they were here for several hours getting drunk and high, then the couple broke off, we think the first one to die was the girl Jennifer Marshton, she was killed, then moved out of the way. The others, according to Sam, went looking for her, and then he heard Bobby scream, Bobby Lange, and then the last victim we believe was Susan Strutters. Sam was found in here. The door locked from the outside, he was out like a light, and the only blood on him was from a knock he took to the head somehow. None of the victims have blood from the other victim on them, or any foreign DNA. This place, as you can see, is a trace-evidence nightmare. Case in point…" He pointed to a used condom on the ground, one of several actually.

"The girls, there was no evidence of…"

"Nothing. They were killed, brutally, but they were otherwise untouched. Not like I can say thank god for small favors."

"Alright, I need to look around for a bit on my own, take it in with fresh eyes. I'll meet back with you in twenty."

"Sure thing, I'll be outside near stairwell A." He pointed left, Morgan nodded and turned on his flashlight.

Twenty five minutes later, Morgan called Hotch, "I got nothing. He's right, this place eats forensics. It's so dirty and high traffic there's no way to tell what was left behind when."

"Alright, rendezvous with Rossi and see if you have any better luck there." Hotch stated, looking at his own files. The information on the students was minimal. They were all in theater club together, they went to the same small public high school, they were close-knit, but didn't have enemies or strife with anyone openly. Susan had gotten the lead in the play, Bobby also played lacrosse, and the two had been dating for ten months. Jennifer was Sam's next-door neighbor, but they were strictly platonic best friends. Rumor has it Sam had a crush on a girl in band with him, but no names came up in the interviews. The first they'd heard about drugs was the absinth, and it made sense saying that was their first online purchase from Denmark on Bobby's dad's credit card, courtesy of one Penelope Garcia.

Looking at it, there didn't seem to be one person who would have a reason to so viciously kill them, and yet, no one could argue the three dead bodies that were bludgeoned so severely it was hard to recognize them.

He looked at the picture of Sam Wilson, the kid had to be 120 pounds max, and that was probably being generous. He still hadn't hit his growth spurt, was five-foot nothing, Bobby, he was more of a contender, he was 5'9" and still growing, 160 pounds of muscle and aggressive playing, judging by the scouting log-book. Strange how sophomore year of high school could be so different for two boys. Hotch just couldn't imagine how Sam would even be able to manage killing them if he did do it, but if he didn't, why was he going on about ghosts? He closed the file, unable to gain any more insight from it. No, to figure this out he had to learn how one person lived through it, the smallest one there no less.

He approached the interrogation room's mirrored side compartment and stepped in. Reid and Prentiss were still inside the side room, getting ready to enter. Under Reid's arm was an Ouija board and pentagram.

Hotch raised one eyebrow, lowering the other to give him a look.

"Rossi said he had one of these under his bed. One of the officers told me about his polygraph results. He passed telling them all a ghost did it. We're dealing with a person so into his delusions that they've become reality. A polygraph deals only in subjective truth, which is one of the reasons why it is inadmissible in court. Because he believes that a ghost did this so full-heartedly, the fastest way to push it is directly. Psychologically, he might give us more details about the criminal through this than anything else. Prentiss, remember the plan?"

"Yeah, I let him push the letters wherever he wants, but if he's just playing around…"

"I push him, and have the ghost accuse him. See what he does. There's a good chance he was high at the time so he might have dissociated from reality, but the lack of physical evidence on his person makes it questionable. Maybe there was a fifth person, but then again, maybe he's a mastermind and ditched the evidence before coming back in and locking himself up."

That was the real question, now wasn't it?

"Well, this interview isn't going to start itself." Prentiss said, heading in. Reid waited for a moment.

"Hotch, when I drum my hand on the Ouiji board, I need someone to dim the lights. Flicker them dramatically when we set it up, especially once Sam touches it, then bring it back up to dim mood lighting."

"On it. Don't want Prentiss knowing?"

Reid shook his head, "No, it'll make her look more natural if she's caught up in the moment. Emily is going to kill me after this." He laughed, "She hates this sort of stuff."

"Ever since what happened to her friend, I can understand."

Before opening the door, Reid added, "You know, because they're detaining him as a material witness, to keep him talking and all… he isn't handcuffed. Once we start this, if he really did it, it might be a trigger."

"I'll keep my eye on the door."

Reid waved his hand at Hotch. "You do that. Wish me luck."

"Take me back to there, three days ago, you were hanging out with your friends. What happened?" Prentiss began, her voice held a sharpness at bay, punctuating the smoothness rhythmically to set a pattern.

"We were at Bobby's place. Bobby got something he wanted to show us all, we watched a few scary movies and had some nasty Gatorade that he mixed with something."

"Alcohol?" Prentiss asked.

"I dunno, maybe? Jen handed everyone their own bottle she ran out, I think Bobby forgot it was supposed to be four of us and she went to get her own drink, Susan put in some movie called Asylum… but I was kinda passed out so I don't really remember anything more than that about it. When we all got up we decided to walk to the old Nut House, Susan thought it would be cool if we had a séance there, she's kind of into that scary shit." He looked around, expecting to be corrected for his language. He smiled when no one made him apologize for swearing. "We, uh, went inside we kept drinking that nasty Gatorade stuff, we did the séance and then Bobby and Susan started getting really weird, Jen went to puke, and then there was this ghost."

"This ghost? Seriously? You're going to have to do better than that Sam." Prentiss ventured, giving him a look.

Reid gave Prentiss a very measured look, "Don't interrupt him, he was only just starting, weren't you Sam?"

Sam shrugged, "First you could only hear it. Far away, you know what the sound of a rake on cement sounds like? It was exactly like that, but it was moving up and down the hallways getting closer. It kept getting closer and closer, I didn't hear it at first, but Bobby made me go look for it with him. It took half an hour running around the halls and I didn't see anything. I chugged my drink and went back to the others. That's when I saw it though. Inside the reflection on the door I saw these huge eyes just staring. It freaked me the hell out. I pointed it out to Bobby, but he didn't believe me."

"And so then what? Bobby didn't believe you so you got mad? You hit him? How hard did you hit him, Sam? You can tell me, I won't be mad."

"I didn't hit Bobby! He's my best friend and would kick my ass if I tried! I got scared so I decided to leave. I went to get Jen and tell her I was taking off." He swallowed hard, "But when I found her… there was blood everywhere…" He frowned hard, tears getting ready to spill over.

"Right… and just who did that to her, you think, Sam? You didn't see anyone else there, so you have to know who went to find her!"

"No way! None of us would hurt Jen like that! I'm telling you a ghost did it! Like the ghost of a lunatic. They do crazy shit like that… you know they used to lock up schizophrenics in there. Those crazy fucking people do all sorts of insane shit!"

Reid's eyebrows furrowed trying to keep his mask firm, Prentiss gave him a look.

"You know, you said you did a séance. Who did you contact then? Do you remember?" Reid offered.

Hotch waited for Reid to thrum his fingers, give the sign. He looked frazzled, thrown off by the remarks, and he really truly should have anticipated this conversation running this way. Hotch chided himself for his own idiocy. While berating himself, he almost missed Reid thrum the Ouija board, _almost_.

He dimmed the lights momentarily and returned them to normal brightness, Prentiss looked up at the light momentarily confused then back to Sam who was locking eyes with Reid.

"If you think it'll tell us who killed my friends, sure."

"Okay. Let's set it up. How do you normally set it up?"

"Like this… oh, I need salt."

Reid pulled out a navy blue book bag, the boy gave him a nod. "My partner found this at your place, I hope you don't mind."

"No, that's fine. Front pocket." Reid took out a large container of iodized salt. "Hand it over."

Reid rested the book bag in front of Sam, the Ouija board on the table in the box.

Sam poured salt in a circle around the floor then in four spots on the table, approximating rather accurately north, south, east and west from what Reid could gather. He took out five stones and set four of them on individual piles of salt, the fifth stone he kissed and slipped into his own pocket.

The ritual itself wasn't particularly sophisticated, and after a few minutes Sam had the board set up. Hotch was right on cue with the lights though, dimming, flickering, turning them off and then back on after a few moments. The look in Sam's eyes were of a person completely unaware of the changes.

Prentiss on the other hand, seemed a bit more apprehensive. Reid looked calm, perfectly calm.

Strange, Reid didn't handle the dark well before… yet now, he seemed completely at peace with it.

"Are you sure about this? If the ghost comes I don't know how to stop it…" He looked around, neither agent seemed afraid. Prentiss seemed downright dismissive, her expression reading a clear 'Sure you will… you'll just cut the crap.'

"We have to get to the bottom of this."

"Alright. Then we have to imagine we're in the Insane Asylum. Each of you have to kiss the stone to keep safe." He took it out of his pocket and handed it to each of them. Prentiss passed it to Reid without so much as hinting her willingness to kiss the rock. Reid brought it to his lips, instead of pressing it to his lips he smelled it though.

Odd, it smelled of something, like residue on a beaker would smell. He pocketed the stone. "You don't mind if I hold on to it, do you?"

Sam shrugged, "Whatever."

Reid couldn't help but notice his pupils looked larger. It could be from the dim light, but then again, there could be a hallucinogen on that.

"Okay, each of us puts both hands on the dial. You're the cops, so you can ask the questions."

"How _generous_ of you." Prentiss said, clearly uninterested.

Reid started, "Is there anyone in here tonight?" Their hands moved the dial over all the letters, nothing being stopped at, just a continual movement.

"You're faking it." The kid picked up his hands. "She didn't kiss it. The spirits aren't going to answer if she's not going to follow with it."

"I am not kissing that thing and your spirit friends are going to get over it."

Reid clicked his tongue. "We aren't imagining it right, are we? What room were you in when you first came into the mental health facility?"

"We came into the common area. They had a lot of plastic chairs there, all bolted to the ground. They probably did group therapy there. We didn't do the séance there though. We went to the fourth floor where they kept the dangerous lunatics."

"Riiiight, and you know this how?" Prentiss asked, less than impressed by teenage research.

"Because that's the one with all the really massive locks on the outsides of the doors." Sam explained.

Reid didn't choose to inform him that was more likely a record room or pharmacy, if the rooms were emptied out he'd have no idea.

"The one with padding, that's where the cops found me, it's also where we had the séance. The ghost chased me back there but he couldn't get me there. It sent him back."

"What was the ghost's name?"

"Spirit, tell us are you here… oh spirit… spirit answer me…" Sam began. Letters traced over to M. A. R. T. Y. "Marty, how old are you?"

D. E. A. D. F. O. R. 5. 0. Y. E. A. R. S.

"Marty, are you angry?"

YES.

Reid interjected, "Why are you angry Marty?"

U. R. C. H. E. A. T. I. N. G.

Interestingly, Marty spoke in the same short-hand as teenagers texting, despite the age gap.

"Marty, did you hurt Sam's friends?"

YES.

"Marty, why did you hurt Sam's friends?" Reid asked, now watching Sam's reactions more than anything else.

No answer came. Prentiss took a turn, "Cut the crap, 'Marty', Sam really did it, didn't he?"

The dial flew to NO.

"Then how'd you do it Marty?" Prentiss spat.

B. R. I. C. K. S.

"What about bricks?" Reid asked. The cause of death hadn't been as simple as bludgeoning three healthy teenagers to death.

I. L. O. C. K. E. D. T. H. E. M. U. P. L. I. K. E. I. M. L. O. C. K. E. D. U. P. 4. E. V. E. R.

"Why Marty, what did they do to deserve that?"

J. E. N. S. A. S. L. U. T. S. U. S. A. N. S. A. B. I. T. C. H. B. O. B. B. Y. S. A. T. O. O. L.

"And what about Sam? Why did Sam live?"

B. C. S. A. M. S. D. E. A. D. A. L. R. E. A. D. Y.

Reid let go of the dial. "If you're done playing, Sam…"

The dial kept moving.

A. N. D. S. O. R. U. U. A. T. E. T. H. E. P. O. I. S. O. N. 2.

Reid's eyes widened when Sam fell forward, seizing. "We need an EMT!"

Thirty minutes later, Prentiss and Reid were in a corner, holding back a tongue lashing for the officers who had supposedly cleared the book bag of any dangerous contents. "What the hell was that about?" Prentiss hissed.

"Peyote, probably. They were doing drugs, he was high out of his mind, maybe he blitzed them. The others were high too, probably experiencing different trips and different dosages, and couldn't defend themselves. But it's not as simple as that. He was high out of his mind but he changed? Either someone helped him or someone else was in on it. Sam probably didn't know what drugs he was putting into his system. He didn't know he'd react that way and they set themselves up for a bad trip. He was on absinth, a hallucinogen, and peyote, another hallucinogen."

"Then who's Marty?" Prentiss crossed her arms, "I thought you said he'd actually subconsciously reveal things through the Ouija board."

"Maybe a class mate who was there and helped him out? Maybe he associates with that name. The murder weapon is a brick, and it was probably dumped in the woods with the clothes he wore when he killed them. They need to canvas the area."

"Should we head there too? See how he'd have gotten himself locked in there?"

Reid glanced at Hotch, "What do you think?"

"It's better than just speculating." Hotch offered.

XXX

The building Reid approached was not on the same scale as any horror-movie insane asylum, the sanitarium was a standard brown-brick building easily confusable with a warehouse if one never ventured inside. Inside, it was clear time had not been fair to the facility. It was dirty, layers of dust and refuse was strewn all about the halls, walk-able paths presented to the most trafficked areas, McDonald bags of varying ages and stages of decomposition littered about the most frequent.

They each took out their flashlights, despite the day-time hours, without electricity running any solid lighting, the boarded up windows made it almost impossible to see. Reid's flashlight snaked around quickly as he scan-read the walls for their graffiti.

"I think I know who Marty is."

Hotch and Prentiss turned to look back at the agent, expectantly. In the dark, Reid didn't notice this, though so he waited for a verbal response.

"…And?" Prentiss said, almost curtly, wondering why Reid would just leave that lying in the air.

"His name's all over the place."

"So he's a teenager?" Prentiss guessed.

"No. Some of the graffiti here is old, really old. This place has been closed since the 60s, so give it a year or two before people brave to break and enter… and even then, maybe not. It was the 60s, they might have been looking for drugs… I think he's an urban legend." His flashlight focused on three distinct spots.

"There's verses on the walls, too. _Don't go knocking on Marty's Door, he'll knock you twice to settle the score_." His flashlight found the next spot, "_In this whole place there's two places Marty won't go –solitaire and free_." Reid gave Hotch a strong look, "That's where they found Sam, isn't it? Solitaire, with padded walls and everything, he was fulfilling the signs he saw. _Marty Marty Looked Up My Dress, Marty Marty Gave a Caress, Marty Marty life of the Party, Marty Marty leave us alone we want to go home_."

"You don't seriously believe that kid saw a ghost, do you Reid?"

"Absolutely I do. He's delusional and all the set up was right here to assure he would. He completely imagined it… or did he? Maybe someone took advantage of it and left him alive to be the fall-guy. Anyone who did that, though, would have to know what drugs they were eating."

"That, or in a psychotic break he dissociated and became Marty the urban legend, then in a surreal state of consciousness ditched his clothes and the murder weapon and then came back inside to fulfill his role as the last victim. If he did this, it's second-degree at best…"

"He had no problem calling his best friends whores and tools, I don't think that's really as innocent as he's playing." Reid stopped dead. "Wait… do you see that?"

His flashlight maneuvered to a confining room, "I can't believe I'm saying this… Guys, I want to go in there, and see if there's a way to get in and out of there. Just in case I can't get out, though, open the door in an hour."

"You want us to shut you IN there?" Prentiss gave him a look of disbelief, Hotch followed suite. After all, the room was dark and hardly inviting.

"Yes. It's best to see it like he saw it and heard it. It might have been something when he was sober he could've figured out, but when he was high…?"

"Right, like going to take a piss in the corner of a round barn," Prentiss elaborated.

"Exactly."

It was twenty-eight minutes later when Hotch and Prentiss had come back to the room when Prentiss heard it.

"Did you hear that?" She said, stopping dead in her tracks.

The thwunk-thwump sound resonated in the empty hallway. Hotch eyed the directionality of the hallway, left and right before looking upward and to the right, closer to the room storing Reid.

"Reid… how did it work out?"

Nothing.

Hotch pushed on the door, and at that moment, Reid stood bolt-upright holding a white vinyl jump-suit two bricks, a bloody knife, and a cheap face-mask.

His lime-green gloves were streaked with the drying blood, but the satisfactory look on his face was priceless.

"I got distracted from trying to get _out_ when I found what was left _in_ here." He allowed Hotch to step inside. "The ventilation shaft over-head, at first I thought as a skinny kid he might have tried to get out through it, but there's no way. Maybe a young kid could do it, but not a teenager. But then I found this."

"Good job, we'll have their forensic team look it over."

"I still want to figure out how he got inside this room."

"We hardly have the time for that, they're trying to process him to get him slated as a witness, they don't have any more time to hold him as a suspect without charging him." Hotch explained.

"Well, we know he did it. In a drugged state he acted out his fantasies and killed them, his supposed friends. The guilt of it was so much that he tried to kill himself later in the police station. Maybe it was only supposed to be a prank at first, but that wasn't what it turned into. Maybe the three bottles of absinth, none of that was meant for him. Maybe Bobby wanted to have a haunted adventure and they needed him sober to pull it off, but when he got high he lost sight of it and went all out. Either way, either someone locked him in here and saw it, or he locked himself in here to punish himself or dissuade suspicion. Call it in, but if I can't find how he got in there on his own, I have to assume there isn't a way in and we're still looking for another person potentially involved in this murder."

Prentiss smirked, "Oh, you don't think it was _Marty do yooooooooou_…" she tapped his shoulder, "I say let him play around. I can drive that back into town, I'll have Morgan pick you up in another hour."

Hotch measured Reid, he knew that determined look, more often than not that look hit him in the bedroom and not on the field when Spencer really, _really_ wanted to try something out, he found himself caving.

"Alright, an hour and then we're done. I don't feel like being here until all hours of the night, we have other matters we could attend to, here. We still haven't had a proper interview with Sam's family or the victims' families."

Reid nodded. "Thanks Hotch."

It isn't until there is a click of the door closing Reid inside again that his breathing changes into an inaudible silence. The rustle of fabric lifting and raising the only noise inspired by the motions as he listens, soundlessly listens for any hint of air-flow, strains to see any unexplained trails of light. He finds none. His fingers navigate to the wall's seams and peels away at them. Suddenly, there is a give, one of the rubberized panels comes down. Turning his flashlight on, he enters the opening and finds a very narrow gap between the walls of this room, and a janitor's closet that holds connection with the B hall way. The hallways run perpendicularly to each other, except for where hallways A and C fork to create the perimeter of a square. It made the schematics look more like an E shape, except the middle stem of the E ended in a custodian closet and did not adjoin into either hallways A or C, nor did A or C join together.

The only way to get to either hallways A, B, or C was the common area.

So that was how he did it.

Reid looked back at the hole he had just squeezed through, someone like Morgan wouldn't have managed, but Prentiss or more accurately- Sam? That would've been easier than 'squeezing into' extra-large sweats.

So Jen was the closest to the common area. Sam had to have gone to the containment cell, changed into the white jump-suit, then leave to scare the others. Except, he didn't scare them, he killed them. By time he was even hunting Bobby and Susan, he probably had completely divorced himself from being Sam, and because of the rumors that Marty wouldn't go into solitaire confinement, he locked the door to prevent himself from being trapped inside it. Then, after he had killed the others, he stripped out of Marty's identity and Marty's clothes… re-entered through the other room, closed himself in to trap Marty out of his mind and re-associate with himself. Petty hostilities had led him to killing his friends when taking a simple prank too far.

Reid bumped into Hotch, almost making the older agent jump, almost.

"Jesus, Reid… you could have radioed me that you found a way out."

Smiling, Reid gave his lover an apologetic look, "Well, I could have, but magicians are rarely wont to show how they do things."

"You're not a magician, you're a profiler." Hotch explained, really, they have talked about this before.

"True, that aside, this room was his physical trigger to his dissociation. To him, it was Marty who killed his friends, but ultimately, he did it while he was high. Nothing outside of what we expected, but the reason he didn't remember how he got locked in the room was because when he switched back from Marty, he was already closed in the room, and Marty doesn't come out in that room. That trick of the mind left him in there for two and a half days."

"Good work."

"Thanks." Reid smiled, fixing his hair. "I don't ever want to be locked in one of those rooms again." He smiled, that prophetic sadness made Hotch pull him close.

The proximity left him with a sense of comfort that Reid hadn't felt since hearing about this case. He wondered when his mind would slip, and when he'd realize, if he ever realized anything again, that he wasn't lucid. It was horrifying.

Seeming to pick up on the tension, Hotch offered, "You're not going to wind up in a place like this. Reid…"

"You can't predict the future, _statistically_…"

"Statistically, everyone alive dies. Does that mean you should be constantly afraid of dying? Statistically you have a larger chance of not being schizophrenic than being schizophrenic, but you always focus on that chance that it will happen, instead of the likelihood that it won't. I understand it, don't get me wrong, I measure my own reactions to Jack and keep telling myself 1 in 8… 1 in 8 abuse victims become abusers. I make a fine rendition to 7."

"You know, if you keep talking like that, we're going to have really big problems."

"Really, how so?" Hotch said, his voice lilting playfully.

Reid nudged him, "We still have to wrap up the case and file reports, yet you are dangerously close to me throwing you down and having my way with you." He looked around, "I'd rather that happen in a hotel if not one of our places, to say the least. You're on warning." He winked, kissed Hotch in between the creases of his eyebrows, and walked backwards a handful of steps before turning around.

"Morgan should be here soon, I think I'll wait outside."

"Be careful if you're going out the window."

Smiling, Reid nodded, "Window? I'm going out the front door. There's no way I'm abusing my knee pointlessly. Not with all the exercise I'm putting it through tonight."

Hotch smiled at Reid's retreating back, he couldn't possibly agree more.

Fin.


End file.
